Ok guys, hope you can help...

I got an Asus K53E-ME2 (Sandy Bridge i5, HD 3000 graphics) with an HDMI port. In Windows it works perfectly fine; I connect an external monitor (BenQ G2420HD) and the screen displays in both the laptop and the external monitors.

Now, in my Debian Squeeze (6.0.3 with 2.6.32-5 kernel, x86-64, GNOME) one of two things happen:

- If I boot the laptop *without* plugging the HDMI, and then I plug it in, it never shows up in the available screens (System - Preferences - Screens/Monitors (not sure since it's in spanish)).

- If I boot the laptop with the HDMI plugged in, the external monitor displays, but the laptop monitor doesn't.

The laptop's monitor native resolution is 1366x768.

If you got any questions I'd be happy to oblige.

Thanks...

In either of the states you mentioned, could you post the output of ?

Thereby, you get
information on the configuration of your X screens. xrandr is also the tool to configure all aspects of a multi-monitor setup.
Together with the information at https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Xrandr, you should be able to figure out how to correctly setup your monitors.

If you prefer a graphical utility, you can use arandr from the Debian standard repository, which provides a limited subset of xrandr's options.

(Depending on the xrandr output) your issue is more likely a userland software configuration thing than something driver/kernel related.

I hope this helps.

Hi on.sid, thanks for the reply.

The laptop is at work and I'm not in again until Monday, but I'll post the output as soon as I get in.

However I already tried xrandr and it only shows one screen, Screen0 - on both cases.

I've done a fair amount of googling and it seems like I have to upgrade to a 3.x kernel, as well as load up a specific module - I'll try it on Monday and post the results. It looks like the 2.x kernels have issues with Sandy Bridge chipsets.